Theatre Review: Memphis has heart, but its sweetness verges on saccharine

Memphis has heart, but its sweetness verges on saccharine

An intriguing thing about Memphis is that it seldom mentions the words “rock ’n’ roll.” It’s noteworthy, because the birth of that music is what the show is supposed to be about. As far as I can tell, the phrase doesn’t even crop up until the second act. A New York record producer, memorably small and smarmy, comes to the eponymous city some time in the mid-1950s and informs some black musicians, who thought they were playing rhythm and blues, that R&R — the stuff he puts out for white kids — is just R&B “sped up.” The musicians look as if they’re about to contest the point, but opt for a quiet and conceivably more prosperous life instead.

Memphis is a better show than I’d expected and a less good one than I hoped. It takes some bold steps and then shuffles back on them. It ends with a celebratory number called Steal Your Rock ’n’ Roll (as in “don’t let them …”) suggesting that the show and the characters have bought into the Man’s values and vocabulary. In which case, why were they shown implicitly questioning them?

The central character of Memphis is a young, poor, white enthusiast of black music named Huey Calhoun, loosely based on the real Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips. (Huey, Dewey, where’s Louie?) Though unable to read a script or anything else, Huey — through a combination of performer’s instinct, musical passion and sheer wheedling energy — becomes the city’s top DJ, the first to hook a young white audience on black music. He even gets his own TV show, Huey’s Rhythm and Blues Cavalcade. (Note the title.) He also falls in love with Felicia, the singer at the basement club where he first got hooked. Felicia’s brother, who runs the club and carries his own (literal) scars, is suspicious of Huey and scared at the thought of an interracial romance. That’s nothing to the reaction of sections of the white population. Huey gets attacked; Felicia gets beaten.

Taking a stand against the racism of 50 years ago may not be especially daring, but Memphis (book by Joe DiPietro) does it with tact and force. It also takes a refreshingly tangy approach to its central couple. Huey, indelibly embodied by Bryan Fenkart, is nobody’s hunky crusader; he’s snaky, in voice, gesture, gait and, to some extent, behaviour. He’s gutsy and his values are good, but once success strikes, he goes from being nervy, graceless and socially inept to being arrogant, graceless and socially inept. He pretty much digs his own grave by doing the right thing at the wrong moment. (Added source of suspense: Will the show itself sell out by resolving the love plot too easily? I’m not telling.) Felicia Boswell, playing her namesake, doesn’t get to be so individual, but she’s attractively sharp-tongued, and her singing stops the show. Though, as is par for the course these days, she stops it the coldest with the worst song; the program reveals that it’s called Colored Woman, but other specifics are unavailable, so incomprehensibly does she blast it. I’m not blaming her; it’s what the form and the fans demand. But, whatever they think, it ain’t drama.

Which is a shame, because a surprising amount of the score is — especially the parts with a comic edge. The music is by David Bryan, of Bon Jovi (he also collaborated with DiPietro on the lyrics). Unexpectedly, given those pop credentials, the character numbers, with good shapes and rhymes, are better than the onstage recreations, which are yardgoods stuff and make the show feel like the first jukebox musical to be stacked with newly written songs.

Christopher Ashley’s production keeps score and story driving, much helped by the ubiquitous Sergio Trujillo (this is his third show to reach Toronto this year) whose choreography puts familiar moves into invigorating patterns. There are notable supporting performances from Will Mann as a cheerfully versatile janitor; William Parry as a radio station boss, cheerfully adjusting his values to suit the market; and Julie Johnson as Huey’s widowed mom who comes on like Ethel Merman channelling Mahalia Jackson.

That last requires a bit of explaining. Initially as prejudiced as anyone else on her side of the tracks against the idea of her boy hanging out with a coloured girl, mama is nonetheless stirred by the sound of a black choir; and the show does an admirable job of showing how two musical traditions, country and gospel, can find common ground. Once Huey has bought her a new house and a new coat, she really lets loose and lays some soulful, roof-raising advice on him. It turns out, though, that it was the wrong advice, which retrospectively takes the shine off things and underlines the show’s willingness to sacrifice everything for short-term effect. We’ve already had an astonishingly cheap moment in which a character, previously traumatized into silence, finds his voice: not just his speaking but his singing voice, in a scene that was actually moving until they got manipulative with it. And then there’s that closing number, whose semantic problems are compounded by a structural one. This is musical about music but with a central character who isn’t a singer. The actor can certainly sing, and as long he does it in character, in plot numbers, it’s acceptable. But the finale brings him into a performance context; his sweetheart, who seems to have jumped into the Motown era of the next decade, is in concert, and there he is, part of it. The calculation is that the audience won’t care, as long as they get a big finish with rock ’n’ roll in the title. The dumbing down of the American musical continues, the sadder for happening in a show that for so much of the time is intelligent.

–Memphis runs through Dec. 24 at the Toronto Centre for the Arts. For more information, visit dancaptickets.com or call 416-644-3665.